Sermon: Our
No – and God’s Yes
Sunday 16th. October, 2005
Reading: Jesus Christ,
who was preached among you by me and Silas and Timothy, was not Yes and No, but
in Him it has always been Yes…………….
2
Corinthians 1.19
In 2 Corinthians 1.19, there is an intriguing verse, a mysterious verse
– Paul writes this:
Jesus Christ, who was
preached among you by me and Silas and Timothy, was not Yes and No, but in Him
it has always been Yes…………….
in Him it has always been Yes……………. I am
sure we can sense here marvellous truth, we catch, as it were, on the wind, the
ringing sound of Good News………..in these words, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by me and Silas and Timothy,
was not Yes and No, but in Him it has always been Yes……………. and rightly so,
for this truth here can be traced right throughout the Bible
the Bible has something to say
about our No and God’s Yes
The book of Exodus tells us of a
desperate situatation, in the desert at Rephidim. The people of
Within a very short space of time,
in this critical situation, the people’s trust in God collapses. The people
demand water, they confront Moses, and the crisis deepens.
And it is striking how, rather
than remembering the Lord’s goodness in similar situations in the past, and
trusting in Him now,
they come up with that familiar old refrain about
In that crisis, faith seemed to have evaporated in the
desert sun, the very hearts of the
people seemed baked hard by the heat.
There at Rephidim, there was a
disastrous collapse of faith and hope and trust in God’s care,
and it
stayed in
Psalm 81: The Lord says, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land
of Egypt…open your mouth and I will feed you
but…..
Psalm 95: Do not be stubborn, as your ancestors were…. as they were that day in
the desert…. the Lord says – there they put Me to the
test and tried me……
yet
that collapse of faith and hope and
trust in God’s care,
that No !
the people spoke against God,
was
answered by the Lord’s overwhelming Yes to them !
for the
Lord told Moses to strike a great boulder and water flowed in pure, clear,
cleansing, rich abundance and the people had enough to drink.
So here in Exodus, when His people say
No ! we have a story of God’s Yes,
God’s yes ! His love and grace for
us, when our circumstances are desperate. for this is
often what desperate circumstances, the burdens of life, the stresses of life, do to us – we feel cut off from the life, the
living waters of Jesus Christ,
we may feel we do not know Him any
longer,
we may feel, in moments of dark
despair, like saying No to God !
but such is the incomparable grace
of our loving Father in Jesus Christ,
that our No to God ! meets God’s yes to us - in Him, as Paul says,
it is always Yes…………….
that our No to God ! meets God’s yes to us, and in Jesus Christ the springs of
life well up once again, and we live
This might be a clue to what Jesus is saying in Matthew’s
gospel,
in, once again, a rather mysterious
parable.
Striding into the
the place, as the House of Prayer
of the living God.
Within a couple of hours, the teachers of the law came to
confront Him
Over the past few days, the newspapers and television have
been hounding David Cameron, one of the candidates for the leadership of the
Conservative Party,
after a reporter discovered that one of Mr. Cameron’s “close
relatives” has been treated for heroin addiction in a clinic in
at every press conference, searching, confronting questions have
been directed towards him.
The questions of the teachers of the law were no less
searching – confronting Jesus they ask -
who are you ? why
do you do what you do ? where is your authority for this ?
in reality, saying No ! to Jesus
In the course of this discussion,
the Lord tells this parable.
The parable he tells is of two sons. Their father asks them
to work in the vineyard.
One of the sons says no, but goes on to work with the vines.
The other says yes, but does nothing. When Jesus asks the
simple question which of the sons did what his father wanted, the teachers of
the law agree
that it was the first son, who said
no, he wouldn’t go, but then went on to work in the vineyard
What does Jesus mean by this parable………?
Well, its meaning is this: there are many, like the first
son, who seem to have said No ! to
God,
the outcasts, the blind, the lame,
the tax collectors and so on……. none of whom worship in the
yet they are coming into the
Father’s kingdom and -
there are many, like the second
son, who seem to have said Yes ! to God,
like the teachers of the law, the
leaders in
yet stay outside the Father’s
kingdom.
The meaning of the parable seems to be this……….
that whatever our ‘No’s and ‘Yes’s
to God………….
He is moving in His love and grace among us,
the situation is always in
movement…………..
to our No ! there
is God’s yes !
Don’t we see that brought into the very sharpest focus at
the cross
here surely, there can be no more
decisive No! to
God than the death of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross – surely here,
the world has rejected the living God and spoken in the darkness of that day, a
terrible, inexpressible No !
Yet – it is precisely here that the living God, the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ
has declared His Yes, of grace and love and forgiveness
to us……….
The Apostle Paul puts the ‘No’ and ‘Yes’ of his own personal
life like this, :
in 1 Tim 1.16:
I was once a
blasphemer, and a persecutor, and a violent man
but the grace of our Lord was poured out on me
abundantly in Christ Jesus
I was shown mercy, so
that in me, Christ Jesus might show his unlimited patience…………..
He writes:
I was once a
blasphemer, and a persecutor, and a violent man: in other words, one who
said No, at every turn,
but the grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly
in Christ Jesus
I was shown mercy, so
that in me, Christ Jesus might show his unlimited patience…………..
Our no ! and
God’s yes, the Father’s yes
What hope this gives us !
Often we hear voices within that condemn us,
voices from the past, they may
be, condemning us for who we are, what
we do
voices that say No !
But there is life for us, in God’s grace and love,
for in Him, it has always been Yes.
What hope and comfort, and strength this gives
!
And then again, there are those we love, we long for them to
know Jesus Christ,
to come to know Jesus Christ,
yet how indifferent they seem,
seeming to say No! to
all the indescribable riches in Jesus,
yet our hope is this, that in that
situation, where men and women say No to
Him,
even there in Him, it has always been Yes
and even in the seemingly most
hopeless situation
the Father is working through His
Son, Jesus Christ
– in His grace and love.
Sometimes, in darker moments, we might think that it seems
as if this whole generation says No !…. to Jesus
Christ
yet the Father, we have seen, is
still working out His desires and purposes in His grace and love.
For Jesus Christ, was
not Yes and No, but in Him it has always been Yes…………….
in Him it has always been Yes……………
AMEN